Savage War of the Burning Sky

[Zadmar]

Knowledges

In Savage Worlds, the available Knowledge skills are tailored to each individual setting. Only subjects that are important to the setting should have their own Knowledge skill, everything else comes under Common Knowledge (a Smarts roll), with a modifier depending on the character's background. The D&D Craft and Profession skills would also be treated as Knowledges in Savage Worlds, although the latter would usually fall under Common Knowledge.

I recommend using the following Knowledge skills in the Savage Worlds conversion (in addition to any Knowledges required for Edges):

Knowledge (Arcana): This already exists in Savage Worlds, and works much the same way.
Knowledge (Architecture): Use whenever WotBS requires a Knowledge (architecture and engineering) check.
Knowledge (History): Use whenever WotBS requires a Knowledge (history) check.
Knowledge (Nature): Use whenever WotBS requires a Knowledge (nature) check.
Knowledge (Nobility): Use whenever WotBS requires a Knowledge (nobility & royalty) check.
Knowledge (Religion): Use whenever WotBS requires a Knowledge (religion) check.
Knowledge (Planes): Use whenever WotBS requires a Knowledge (the planes) check.
Knowledge (Bardic Lore): Use in place of Bardic Knowledge, also a requirement for the Bard Edge.
Knowledge (Alchemy): Use in place of Craft (alchemy) for making alchemical items.

WotBS also references Knowledge (local) and Knowledge (geography), but I recommend using Common Knowledge for those - as well as for Knowledge (dungeoneering), which isn't referenced directly.

 

[Zadmar]

The conversion is coming along nicely, and my eventual goal is to turn it into a PDF, although I'm still trying to decide how best to handle it - the most likely outcome is that I'll split the content into multiple PDFs.

The setting rules, new Edges, races, archetypes and general conversion guidelines may end up being rolled together into a generic fantasy PDF that can be used as the basis for any D&D setting conversion.

The conversion of the War of the Burning Sky Player's Guide will likely be its own standalone PDF, so that it can be downloaded by players without containing any GM information. I might include the setting rules, new Edges, race and archetypes in this version as well, so that players don't need to download the generic PDF - just the official Player's Guide, and my Player's Guide conversion.

The GM-specific stuff will probably go into its own PDF, although I might break the bestiary off into a separate PDF. It depends how big it gets. I guess I should include magic item conversions somewhere as well.

My conversion references Savage Armoury and Savage Spellbook (free fan supplements I've created in the past), but doesn't use any of the companions or official books other than the core rules. That means someone wishing to run Savage War of the Burning Sky has a total overhead of $20 - that's $10 for the Savage Worlds Deluxe rulebook, and another $10 for the War of the Burning Sky adventure path.

 

[Zadmar]

Now that I've reached 10 posts, I'm allowed to include links, so here's what I've been working on for the last two days:

Savage War of the Burning Sky Bestiary

My conversion tool was able to handle the lion's share of the work, with only some minor changes for recognising a new input format, although I made several further enhancements to it (such as handling classes, more spells, new Edges, etc). I also had to adjust each statblock by hand, because of the way much of the data (particularly skills and feats) was displayed over multiple lines in the WotBS bestiary, and because I also wanted to include things like Wild Card status and natural armour names.

It still needs fine-tuning, some of the monsters will need tweaking and expanding, buffing or nerfing, but as you can see it's coming together quite nicely.

 

[Zadmar]

Something that really hasn't converted very well is the units of 20 troops. In theory they could be treated like swarms, but I think this is one of the situations where a direct conversion isn't going be appropriate.

Savage Worlds was originally based on a tabletop wargame, and it's exceptionally good at handling big battles with lots of individuals (in fact it handles such battles far better than combat against a single opponent - individual monsters tend to die very quickly).

However characters in Savage Worlds don't scale in power in the same way as D&D. You'd normally have perhaps 2-4 enemy Extras per PC, perhaps with a Wild Card boss; a unit of 20 soldiers would usually be a decent challenge for a party of 5 or 6 PCs.

In some cases this is fairly easy to convert - for example when facing multiple waves of palace guards, instead of each waving consisting of a single unit representing 20 guards, each wave might consist of 1-2 guards per PC. Players should be able to chop through each wave fairly fast, although with Savage Worlds there's always the risk of death, even from relatively weak foes, so it won't be necessary to convert the "filler" encounters used in D&D to wear down PC resources.

But for the big battles it's going to be problematic. I can see two ways of handling it. The first would be to focus the attention on one part of the battlefield, as a series of smaller battles. The number of opponents could also be buffed by providing the players with allied NPCs under their control (this is another common approach in Savage Worlds), however I wouldn't recommend dealing with more than about a hundred individual troops, otherwise even Savage Worlds will start to slow down.

The second approach would be to use the mass battle rules from the core rulebook. These are very fast, but also quite abstract. What I may personally do is use a mixture of both approaches, using the mass battle rules to get things started, then turn the end of it into a big combat scene with dozens of individual troops.

Note that the "Archery Volleys" should probably use the rules for Suppressive Fire - 20 individual archers focusing on a single PC will usually result in a dead PC, no matter how powerful they are.

 

[Morrus]

Now that I've reached 10 posts, I'm allowed to include links, so here's what I've been working on for the last two days:

Savage War of the Burning Sky Bestiary

My conversion tool was able to handle the lion's share of the work, with only some minor changes for recognising a new input format, although I made several further enhancements to it (such as handling classes, more spells, new Edges, etc). I also had to adjust each statblock by hand, because of the way much of the data (particularly skills and feats) was displayed over multiple lines in the WotBS bestiary, and because I also wanted to include things like Wild Card status and natural armour names.

It still needs fine-tuning, some of the monsters will need tweaking and expanding, buffing or nerfing, but as you can see it's coming together quite nicely.

Wow - that's astonishing!

 

[Zadmar]

Thanks! It's worth noting that WotBS also references other D&D monsters, which aren't explicitly listed in the bestiary. You should be able to find most of them using my Monster Finder - for example the dog and dire weasel from act 1, the lantern archon from act 2, etc. I'll probably copy them over into the final bestiary as well, for the sake of completeness.

 

[Zadmar]

I've already converted the D&D races, but WotBS also has "seela". They're pretty difficult to convert, but I took my best shot:

Seela
• Low Light Vision (+1): Seela have exceptional night vision, and ignore penalties for Dim and Dark lighting.
• Fae Charm (+1): Although they've lost much of their physical beauty, seela still possess the haunting charm of the fae. They gain a +1 bonus to Charisma, and may ignore the Charismatic requirement if they wish to take the Bard Edge.
• Gliding (+1): Seela can glide at their normal Pace, although they cannot gain altitude, and always lose at least 1" of height at the end of each round.
• Keen Hearing (+½): Seela have exceptional hearing, and gain a +1 bonus to listening-based Notice rolls.
• Stand the Heat (+½): Seela are not harmed by the fires of their home forest. This ability doesn't provide any protection against other sources of heat or fire.
• Fallow Touch (+0): The bare flesh of a seela saps life. Any living creature who spends a full round in contact with a seela must make a Vigor roll or become Shaken (if the creature is already Shaken, and fails with a 1 on the Vigor die, then they suffer a wound). This ability requires direct flesh-to-flesh contact, and other seela are not affected.
• Spiritual (+*): Seela are spiritually strong. They can increase their Spirit to d12+1 with normal advances, and to d12+2 and d12+3 with the Professional and Expert Edges respectively.
• Fragile (-2*): Seela are physically fragile from their years of torment. They suffer a -1 penalty to Toughness, and cannot increase their Vigor beyond d10 with normal advances. If they have Vigor d10, they may take the Professional and Expert Edges at Legendary to raise their Vigor to d12 and d12+1 respectively.

The original version have "bard" as a favoured class, and gain an innate "Bardic Music" bonus, as well as "ghost sound" and "message" spell-like abilities. I decided to link that indirectly into the Fae Charm ability, allowing them to skip the Charismatic requirement for the Bard Edge so that it's a more appealing choice.

I've rated Gliding as a +1 racial ability. Proper flight is a +2 ability, so I think +1 isn't unreasonable for a version that doesn't let you get off the ground. If anything it might be a bit weak, but when viewed in the context of the entire racial package I think it's okay. It's obviously better than the original version, but I think it keeps the general flavour.

Fallow Touch is likely to be as much a hindrance as a help, so I've rated it as +0.

 

[Morrus]

[MENTION=63]RangerWickett[/MENTION] should get a kick out of this. I don't know if he knows anything about SW, though.

 

[RangerWickett]

I noticed it, but yeah, I'm unfamiliar with Savage Worlds. It's cool to see someone going to the effort for a conversion, but I was going to wait for someone else to comment on how the rules looked first.

 

[Zadmar]

I noticed it, but yeah, I'm unfamiliar with Savage Worlds. It's cool to see someone going to the effort for a conversion, but I was going to wait for someone else to comment on how the rules looked first.

I posted most of the conversion information in this thread on the Pinnacle forums as well, hoping to get more Savages interested in the setting, although there's not been much feedback there either - but if I was doing something glaringly wrong, you can be pretty sure I'd be called out on it.

The setting rules and Edges were discussed separately on this thread, while Savage Armoury and Savage Spellbook (which I'm also using for the conversion) were discussed here and here respectively, and the conversion tool I used for the bestiary was discussed here.